Jammu, March 25 BJP MLAs walked out of the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly on Tuesday after uproar marred the House proceedings over the issue of daily wagers, who are on strike in the union territory.
Opposition and treasury benches raised slogans as they blamed each other for the present plight of thousands of daily wagers in the UT.
Leader of Opposition (LoP) and BJP MLA Sunil Sharma said he raised concerns about the daily wagers' issue in the House on Monday, but there was no response from the government.
“The government should make a statement over it,” the LoP demanded.
Deputy Chief Minister Surinder Choudhary of the NC accused the BJP of failing to resolve the issues of daily wagers in the last 10 years.
“We formed a committee within days to resolve the issues of daily wagers. Why you didn’t form a committee to address their grievances in the past 10 years,” Choudhary said.
The remarks of the deputy CM triggered a war of words between the BJP and the ruling NC and Congress members.
BJP’s Sham Lal Sharma said the “government should behave like a government”.
As protests continued, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said the BJP has agreed that there has been no justice with daily wagers for over 10 years.
“I appeal to daily wagers to call off the strike. The committee headed by the chief secretary and other bureaucrats will hold talks with you,” he said.
Later, the BJP legislators staged a walkout from the House.
The daily wagers have been on strike for the last two days and have said that the protest will be indefinite till a solution is found to their issues.
Thousands of daily wagers have been demanding regularisation and an increase in wages.
Some of these daily wagers have already crossed the maximum age limit of applying for a government job.
There are cases in which a daily wager has been serving the department for the last 22 years without any decision on their fate.
Interestingly, many departments like the Jal Shakti department, power development department and some others depend heavily on the smooth functioning of the daily wagers.
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